Now Predator: Badlands is out in the wild and has left us with that cliffhanger to speculate about, fans are starting to ask the question: is director Dan Trachtenberg building towards a ‘Predator Cinematic Universe?’
Trachtenberg, who directed franchise reviver Prey and the animated film Killer of Killers before the record-breaking Predator: Badlands, is clearly building towards something, with characters from previous films in the franchise popping up in cameo form across his various Predator projects. Indeed, at the end of Killer of Killers we see Arnold Schwarzenegger’s iconic Predator character Dutch in stasis, just begging to be thawed for an all-star team up at some point in the future.
While Trachtenberg is keeping his cards close to his chest in terms of his next Predator movie, he told Variety in a recent interview that it is his intention that each Predator movie is “a complete thought,” and has learnt a valuable lesson from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
“It can all go out the door once we start putting pen to paper on stuff, but I’ve looked as far as I could to feel comfortable about what I’m doing,” Trachtenberg said. “Every movie is a complete thought, not that much unlike the early Marvel stuff before the first Avengers movie, where it’s like, those are great movies, and lo and behold, we’re actually setting up that things could come together in a delicious way. But they weren’t like, ‘See how everything’s interconnected like crazy all of a sudden!’ So I’m trying to learn that lesson and make sure that any of these movies that we do are awesome ideas for movies on their own.”
Variety then pressed Trachtenberg on the possible of tying all his threads together to form an Avengers-style payoff, since be brought the movie up.
“It’s hard,” he responded. “It’s fun to geek out and think, ‘Oh my god, wouldn’t it be cool if…,’ even on a movie that you’d never expect that to happen in. But it’s only cool if the journey there is equally worth taking.”
Check out IGN’s Predator: Badlands Ending Explained to find out what’s next for the series.
In the shorter term, Predator: Badlands looks like a hit after it secured the biggest global opening ever for a Predator movie — including the Alien vs. Predator films — at the box office. Disney said Predator: Badlands opened to $40 million domestically and $40 million internationally for a global opening weekend total of $80 million. That’s the biggest debut for a Predator movie ever at current rates. For context, 2018’s The Predator opened to $73.5 million.
Predator began with 1987’s much-loved Predator, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Predator: Badlands, which arrives nearly 40 years later, is less sci-fi horror, more mainstream sci-fi action. For the first time ever the Predator is the protagonist, with a Yautja called Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) out to prove himself to his father by killing a monster on a death planet. Along the way, he meets a Weyland-Yutani synth called Thia, played by Elle Fanning, in an Alien / Predator crossover.
It’s a big swing for Predator and for Dan Trachtenberg, but he was uninterested in essentially remaking prior Predator movies for this new sequel. In a recent interview with IGN, Trachtenberg said he was inspired by Terminator 2 when it came to making Badlands. “Terminator 2: Judgment Day was like a movie my mom could watch,” he said. “So that was a part of it for me, like how to make something that was bold and visceral but also emotional.”
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
